Can Worms Help Recover Memory? Fringe Fact vs Fiction

Last week's "Fracture" made us question the possibility of human bomb-making, but the latest episode of Fringe shifts our attention back to brain function as Agent Olivia Dunham begins to piece together her memories from a meeting in an alternate dimension. PM talked to Carmela Tartaglia of the University of California, San Francisco's Memory and Aging Center about inducing memory recall.

This week's "Momentum Deferred" featured a peculiar memory-jogging concoction (main ingredient: worms) that Dr. Walter Bishop whips up to restore Agent Olivia Dunham's lost memories of her other-world meeting with William Bell, the CEO of Massive Dynamic.

Bishop claims that in an earlier experiment with cryptic ex-partner Dr. Bell, flat worms were able to transfer their memories to other worms through digestion. In drinking the worm milkshake, Dunham should, according to Bishop, begin to recall the blank details of her memory. It goes without saying that an effective remedy like this one could mean big things for neuroscience, but Carmela Tartaglia of the University of California, San Francisco Memory and Aging Center tells Popular Mechanics it's pure fabrication. "There are no concoctions that restore brain function. I don't know what they're using in the show, but none have been shown to help scientifically."

Following in the vein of memory recovery, the Fringe team also picks up Rebecca Kidner, a former guinea pig of Bishop's, who allows him to pump her full of hallucinogens (most likely LSD--a trick we've seen before) in an attempt to jog her memories of some shape-shifting villains--an unconventional memory treatment to say the least.

"Much of what is done in brain injury rehab has to do with occupational therapy, giving people tricks on how to remember better," Tartaglia says. These tricks, she says, include mundane tools like planners or palm pilots, which help to regulate the mind. Actual recovery though, may vary. Tartaglia says results depend on the extent of the brain injury, the patient's age or other problems that are associated with the memory loss. Medications are used in severely injured patients, she says, but they help with motivation of the memory only: a sort of catalyst to aid the treatment.

Though experiments on Kinder seem to be generally unsuccessful (though her on-acid antics are amusing to watch), Dunham finally gets a glimpse of her forgotten past, spurred by the ringing sound of a bell. Though it is never explained why the sound causes Dunham's memory to recover, this could be a classic symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. Sufferers of PTSD, can re-experience traumatic events when their memory is triggered by familiar scenes, situations, smells, emotional feelings, or as in Agent Dunham's case, sounds.

Because there are so many causes of memory loss due to brain injury or disease, it's difficult to say when patients will recover (if at all). Tartaglia says that when it comes to injury, it all comes down to the patient's conscious state during the incident. "The longer the period of loss of consciousness, the longer the period of memory loss," she says. "Even short loss of consciousness can lead to memory loss, usually limited to short periods of time around the event."

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